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Apple Working on Chips for New Macs and AI Servers

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Apple's chip team is working on new processors for more powerful Macs and future artificial intelligence features that will power Apple Intelligence, reports Bloomberg.

macbook-pro-blue-green.jpg

Chips codenamed "Komodo" will likely be M6 chips that will follow this year's M5 chips, while chips codenamed "Borneo" will be Apple's future M7 processors. Another more advanced Mac chip that will debut in the future is codenamed "Sotra."

Apple is designing chips that will be used for AI servers as well, and they are Apple's first processors made specifically for that purpose. The server chips will process Apple Intelligence requests and will be used in Apple servers, serving the same purpose as the high-end Mac chips that Apple uses for servers now now.

The server chips that Apple is working on are part of its "Baltra" project, and the chips are expected to be finished by 2027. Apple is working on multiple types of chips, including those with double, quadruple, and eight times the number of CPUs and GPUs as the current M3 Ultra.

Apple is also developing specialized chips that will be used in future smart glasses that will rival the Meta Ray-Bans, as well as chips for AirPods and Apple Watch models equipped with cameras. Those products could launch as soon as 2027.

Article Link: Apple Working on Chips for New Macs and AI Servers
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/08/apple-mac-ai-chips/
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There can definitely be big advantages when you design both the OS and chip hardware. Software designers can find bottlenecks and work with the chip folks to find optimizations. For example adding pipelining hardware to various functions.
 
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JohnC1959 said:
There can definitely be big advantages when you design both the OS and chip hardware. Software designers can find bottlenecks and work with the chip folks to find optimizations. For example adding pipelining hardware to various functions.
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Yes! I believe this is where Apple have a major advantage now. They see a need, and then design both the software and the hardware around that need. Much like their media encoders in the M-chips for video editors etc. I’d love to see more and more unique pipelining hardware added for different professional use cases.
 
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The team that went on to make Arm chips for Qualcomm was eager to build server chips for Apple a decade ago before being told no and leaving Apple to develop them on their own. This short sightedness cost Apple a bigger advantage with Qualcomm in mobile chips, and a decade behind Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others In server chips. But luckily it looks like they learned from their mistake.
 
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rp2011 said:
The team that went on to make Arm chips for Qualcomm was eager to build server chips for Apple a decade ago before being told no and leaving Apple to to it on their own. This short sightedness cost Apple a bigger advantage with Qualcomm in mobile chips, and a decade behind Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others In server chips. But luckily it looks like they learned from their mistake.
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So, it cost them being even MORE performant and power efficient? As it is, they’re just more performant and power efficient? Eh, I think Apple will be fine. :)
 
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JohnC1959 said:
There can definitely be big advantages when you design both the OS and chip hardware. Software designers can find bottlenecks and work with the chip folks to find optimizations. For example adding pipelining hardware to various functions.
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Uh oh, advantages when you design the OS and chip hardware? I can see it coming now. The EU calls Apple anti-competitive for coming up with something that competes. And, for a fine, they have to pay twice their global profits!
 
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New chips, ya, MS is catching up with their own RISC.

AI, Apple seems to be late to the party, like MS late to the Internet.
 
Joe The Dragon said:
Servers so
hot swap storage?
at least raid 1 for main / boot storage?
IPMI / IPMI that can do DFU mode from the web?

More then 128GB max ram?

More then 1 nic?

PCI-E slots for networking / storage devices?
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I doubt that kind of server. What has been described sounds like dedicated purpose servers, probably stripped of everything not necessary for their sole purpose of processing AI requests.
 
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